Checking Your Research

Checking your research may bring up new lines or even show some mistakes you had previously made. So it's important to do. This weeks article is about how you can check your research.

Firstly, do your own research and source why you believe that you are related to an individual. Once you have done that you can add them to your tree. Copying other people can cause you to go down the wrong line, without you even knowing it, so this is important to do.

Another way of checking is to look at what you have and check to make sure dates are correct - you probably won't get a mother at 6 years old, so don't fall into that trap. (Most people have accidentally done this so don't worry if you have)

Get in contact with someone or a fellow genealogist, you believe you could be related to. This could help confirm, with other people, facts (with sources) about your relatives that you may have missed. You may even get to see photos of your relatives this way too!

Start again, not completely literally - although that may help! When you first started your family tree, you probably didn't have the full set of genealogical skills you have now built up. So you may find that you overlooked something you didn't know existed. Go other each relative and make sure everything adds up properly.

Get someone else to have a look at it, even if they're not a genealogist they would probably point out date problems. However, a genealogical view could also be interesting, you could ask questions on sites like Rootschat or you could visit your local record office, where I'm sure some of the staff will have their opinion on your research.

Use as many different types of records that you can find, there are more records than birth, marriage and deaths. You can use christenings, burials, census, wills etc. these will all have an input.To conclude, you should check your research in all the ways I've stated above, but if you can think of other ways, feel free to comment below.